Your windows

Last week I asked you readers to share your (literal) views with me, and here's what a few of you sent me:

It seems like I spend the most time looking out my kitchen window in the summer when I do my canning, freezing, dehydrating. And most of the time I see my side yard with a pine tree that was a wedding favor at our wedding, a couple weeks short of 25 years ago now. My aunt planted it in her garden until we were home owners and then she gave it to us. There’s a small flower bed in front of it, with a little white picket fence piece framing my mom’s old Schwinn bicycle, seasonal flowers/pumpkins/greenery in the basket.

Beyond our side yard is our neighbor’s house where the new neighbors have a pair of kittens that take up their posts in the windows to watch back at me!

Jen, Grand Forks, North Dakota

*****

When I look up from the desk in my office over the garage, I see the trunks of trees in our woods. Tiny russet buds are erupting from the twigs of one tree. The rest of the woods is still bare except for the evergreens that cling to their needles throughout the long, snowy winter. Through the tree trunks, I glimpse the lake, reflecting a blue sky and the trees and houses on the far side of our bay. Soon the water will be warm enough to plunge in. Then I will see the passing boats of our neighbors and hear the shouts of my grandchildren, but on those days, you can bet I won’t be watching from my office window!

LeAnne, northwestern Wisconsin

*****

When I look outside this morning, I am warmed by a small sense of pride seeing yesterday’s work spread out on the grass. I’m talking about a dirty pool tarp. This vantage point, does not confront me with the still dirty pool, which is okay by me. Don’t get me wrong, I am actually looking forward to relieving the pool of its leaf collection, but it isn’t a beauty in its current sludgy state. Instead, I see the chairs tipped in last night's storm, vibrant grass, and a corner of the sunroom that is getting a more expansive look at what I am seeing from bed, like an incentive to get up for the day (kind of a meager reward, but who knows? Maybe something exciting is happening on the right side of the yard).

Todd, Oak Grove, Minnesota

*****

Note: I thanked Jen for sharing her view with us, bringing us a sense of home, and she said, “It was fun to actually see what I look at.”

Today, reader, may you actually see what you look at!


Windows

Today, I want to hear about you.

What do you see from your window?

“All of us, at some point in our daily lives, find ourselves looking out a window. We pause in our work, tune out of a conversation, and turn toward the outside. Our eyes gaze, without seeing, at a landscape whose familiarity becomes the customary ground for distraction: the usual rooftops, familiar trees, a distant crane. The way of life for most of us in the twenty-first century means that we spend most of our time indoors, in an urban environment [or other], and our awareness of the outside world comes via, and thanks to, a framed glass hole in the wall.” Windows on the World: Fifty Writers, Fifty Views by Matteo Pericoli (preface by Lorin Stein.)

Write me a note about the view from your window (photos are welcome too) and send it HERE (or if you’re a subscriber, simply hit reply to this email.) I’ll publish your writing (along with your first name and location) in next week’s blog installment (5/12/22.)

I’ll get us started…

The cul-de-sac I see from my kitchen window still sleeps, even at 7:40 this Thursday morning. The view into the back yard, though—now that's another story. The trees, still mostly naked from winter, obscure little. Deer, nimble and silent, sashay through the trees, and I wonder what they thought the other day when our girls stretched themselves out on beach towels, winter skin finally exposed, on their terrain. Turkeys, fattened by suburban life, strut through the property now too, showing us we're the ones trespassing and not the other way around. At least the inside of the house belongs to us. Or does it? I sit on a sliver of couch while the dog sprawls her sleeping self over the rest of it, a hind leg thwapping me again and again as she dreams.

*Names in this blog have been changed to protect my family, neighbors, and friends in the neighborhood, and in a nod of appreciation to the beloved Swedish author Maj Lindman, I’ve renamed my three blondies Flicka, Ricka, and Dicka.

Vermin

The unpacking in the new house is calling me today. Do the boxes ever end? Enjoy this old blog entry while I tidy up around here, okay?

*****

A cloying, rotten smell wafted from a vague location in the house. It sent me into sleuthing mode, and I pinpointed its whereabouts to the kitchen. I inspected the trash can for spoiled food that might have missed the garbage bag liner. I cleaned out the fridge. I muscled the appliances away from the walls, mopping hot bleach water under each of them, but none of my efforts reduced the stench.

“This is awful,” I said. “Help me find what’s making that smell.”

Husband and the girls searched with me. The smell emanated from a certain spot by the refrigerator, but we found nothing. Since there was no more we could do, I tried to forget about it.

“This makes no sense,” I said, still enduring the stink two weeks later. “If something died in here, shouldn’t it have decomposed by now?”

“You’d think so,” Husband said.

One day, I had an idea. While I had moved the refrigerator in and out numerous times to clean under it, I had never looked underneath. I knelt down and removed the fridge’s front panel that ran along the floor. I switched on a flashlight and peered in. A mouse—suspended in some metal wires—stared at me with bulging, lifeless eyes. Startled, I flipped through my options and phoned Husband at work.

“You can get him out when you get home,” I said at the end of my story.

When he returned that evening, Husband pulled on a rubber glove. He crouched in front of the fridge and extracted the mouse, securing it between his index and middle fingers. He raised it—like a fat cigar—to his face and sniffed.

“Yep, that’s the smell,” he said.


Another day, we discovered a squatter on the property—living behind a hole in the peak of our house—and Husband decided it was as good a reason as any to race out and purchase a pellet gun. While he was preoccupied with how he would snipe down the squirrel, I wondered about the size of the rodent’s living quarters. And I worried about the future of the window located just inches from the roofline.

Curious about the loudness of his new weapon, Husband squeezed off a practice shot into the ground in the back yard. But since it sounded like a cannon going off, he was convinced ShotSpotter—the city’s gunshot locator system—would bring the police over for a visit. And, he decided, the gun might also leave craters in the house’s stucco. So he drove back to the store to exchange his purchase, settling instead for a standard pump-action bb gun with a scope.

That night, Husband took his post in the back yard by the fire pit—his bb gun at his side—and the girls clustered around him, all of them keeping keen eyes on the hole. I hoped the sound of a crashing window wouldn’t be the exclamation point at the end of our day.

Husband’s hunt was fruitless that night, but he tried again the next day. The girls, enthralled with his new hobby, settled into a routine with him; each night after dinner, they followed him outside, and the four of them trained their gazes on the peak of the house and waited.

One evening, the squirrel poked its head out of its hole, emerged, and hunkered down on top of the window frame. Husband later told me he had considered—in that moment—the possible consequences. With the inaccuracy of the bb gun and its useless scope, it was a sketchy shot and posed the strong possibility of blasting out the window. But he took the shot anyway, which sent the squirrel skittering down the house. Like a pack of hunting dogs, the girls chased after it, and the rodent zipped around the corner. Husband squeezed off one more round before the animal disappeared for good.

Confident the squirrel wouldn’t return, Husband rented a forty-foot extension ladder from a north side hardware store, so he could patch the hole. The ladder, though, was harder to control than the bb gun. During the repair job, Husband almost smashed the window he had earlier avoided shooting. But the ending of the story was a happy one. The squirrel was no longer a tenant, and no windows were harmed in the making of Husband’s adventures.


Our nextdoor neighbor, Glenda, called us one day, her normally relaxed voice taut.

“There’s a bat on my porch. Could you come and get it out right now?”

Husband pulled on gloves and headed over next door, armed with a broom. Glenda, bat-phobic and shaken, had gashed her knee from falling in her attempts to shoo out the creature. She had also sprayed her garden hose inside the enclosed porch—soaking its insides—in the hopes of blasting out the flying mammal that now cowered in a corner.

In just a few minutes, Husband scooped up the bat in his hands and set it free outside. And peace was restored to Glenda's house.

We homeowners have a tight screening process when it comes to what’s allowed in our homes: domesticated animals, yes; creatures of the field, no. In this world, it’s the perennial struggle of the owner to keep his or her home from succumbing to nature. But we’ll fight for it if we have to. And it doesn’t hurt to have a Husband come along and save the day.



Welcome: Part 3

The blur of four little girls—our three plus one—spun my days into weeks and weeks into months until two birthdays passed for Willow in our shared world. I paused my care for the happy four year old in early 2006, however, to take care of Dad. Willow's mom, Rachelle, understood; life with a cancer patient at their house too called for time and careful days.

Illness or no, the earth kept revolving. When Dad was readmitted into the hospital in May—for the final time, although I didn't know it then—I reached out to Rachelle. She easily accepted my offer to watch Willow again, so I knew Jim’s health was worsening. Rachelle and Jim floundered through each day, I learned, but I knew it more from how she looked than what she said. She was thinner, and her words were leaner too.

After Dad died on September 18, Rachelle biked over to bring me her condolences. She stood outside on the sidewalk as I sat on our front steps, and we talked a little. She pressed the tender spot with a couple of well-placed questions, and I let the tears splash onto my skirt, not bothering to cover my face. She understood. She had lost loved ones in the past and was losing one now.

I saw the need before me—and Rachelle too, standing there with her bike—and felt the rejuvenating spark of usefulness. I couldn’t do much for her, but I could watch Willow more, and I said so. She welcomed the offer, and I thought about the flowing of welcomes, back and forth, that had become our way.

After a string of long days with Willow, Rachelle told me Jim was in the hospital. His health disintegrated further, and he became unresponsive. Rachelle stayed by his side. We kept Willow overnight.

During the tucking in for bed, I went down the line of girls.

“The Lord bless you and keep you,” I said to Willow, resting a hand on her head when it was her turn. Her gaze drank in each word, serenity smoothing her features as she watched me say the blessing over her life. “The Lord make His face shine on you and be gracious to you. The Lord turn His face toward you and give you peace.”

A few days later, on the morning of October 6, 2006, I phoned Rachelle.

“I’ll come and pick up Willow this morning,” I said. “Are you at the hospital already? It’s no problem for me to—”

“Jim died this morning.”

My heart clenched. “Rachelle, I’m sorry.”

“Could you still take Willow? She’d have more fun with you guys.”

Willow spent the day with us. I nestled her under my wing wherever we went. I read her stories. We created play-dough snakes. I wouldn’t let Ricka bicker with her like they sometimes did as almost-sisters.

While I was making lunch, the little girl came to me.

“My daddy died today,” she said, pushing smeared glasses up on her nose.

I paused from the peanut buttering. “I know, honey.” I had said her same sentence a few weeks earlier, a strange and terrible bond for me at thirty-six to share with a four year old. “Oh, I know.”

Later in October, I drove north alone to Jay Cooke State Park for Jim’s memorial service. The trees along the route toward Duluth waved their golden sides at the world with a new kind of greeting. The gathering of mourners met in a pavilion, and I knew no one in attendance except Rachelle. She snuggled in for a long hug before wandering off to mingle with her other guests.

I sat at a picnic table, a light breeze tossing leaves at my feet and pulling them away again. I recounted the two years following one phone call from a stranger: the shared path of giving and taking, the always assurance of birthing and losing, the hard way of the welcome. And my heart rested.

It was exactly as it was meant to be.

This is the painting Rachelle made for me. On the back is the title she gave it: “Welcome”

*Names in this blog have been changed to protect my family, neighbors, and friends in the neighborhood, and in a nod of appreciation to the beloved Swedish author Maj Lindman, I’ve renamed my three blondies Flicka, Ricka, and Dicka.

Welcome: Part 2

Willow had a flair for mismatching her clothes, just like my girls. Her red hair was cut in a choppy bob—matted in the back—and she owned so many pairs of artsy eyeglasses, it was hard to keep track. She was two and a half years old in 2004 when she first came to spend some days with us every week, and from the start, she was one of mine. Back in those years with Willow, life was a whirlwind of four little girls in dirty bare feet and princess dresses.

Although Willow was younger than Ricka by five months, she was bigger, so Rachelle, Willow's mom, brought us loads of clothes her girl had outgrown, and those black garbage bags brimmed with delights that smelled like The Wedge food co-op and Rachelle’s house. Purple Danskos and Hanna Anderson clothes, Scandinavian sweaters and red Doc Martens—all second-hand for Willow too when she first got them.

Jim, Willow's dad, visited for a bit each time he dropped his girl off at our house. He was upbeat even though he awoke each day to his battle with melanoma. An outdoors enthusiast, he biked everywhere and told stories about his adventurous rides. Some days he’d have a seizure, though, fall off his bicycle, and pass out. He’d wake up to find himself in an ambulance heading for the ER. I cringed at his stories. He’d shrug and laugh. As we talked about his declining health, the girls leaned into our adult mystery world, pretending to play on the floor near us, but I wished they’d play for real somewhere else. No kid should know what cancer means.

One day, Rachelle dropped off Willow. A full workday was ahead of her, but she lingered in our open front door.

I waved toward a chair. “Wanna sit for a minute, Rachelle?”

“No, I really should go.” She stayed in the doorway.

The girls scampered away, leaving Rachelle and me. And in the next moment, my friend opened her life's book and showed me the hidden thing on its pages.

When Jim was first diagnosed with cancer, they chased after treatments. Convinced there was no way for their family to expand during his radiation therapy, Rachelle and Jim had loved without restrictions. But she had become pregnant. How could they manage a baby in their circumstances, along with Ireland and Willow? Their struggle was too hard, too overwhelming to bring another life into it.

Jim had an idea. His sister was unable to have a baby. Why not give her theirs? Rachelle agreed the plan made sense. And so, they promised Jim’s sister their baby. She was overjoyed.

Five months into the pregnancy, though, Rachelle changed her mind. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t give away the little one she carried. She wouldn’t give her up! But it was too late, Jim stated; they had given their word, and they couldn’t break it now.

I dropped onto the couch, heavy under the weight of the truth, forgetting I had my own children, and they were somewhere in the house doing heaven-knows-what. Expressionless and still standing, Rachelle delivered her story to the end—a delicate thing barely breathing as it came out into the reality of my living room.

Baby Ruby was born in February of 2004, only three months before I met Rachelle—three months before our Dicka was born. Rachelle had honored Jim’s wishes, and Ruby went to live with his sister, her new mother.

“Can you get her back?” I said.

“No,” Rachelle said, unblinking. “We gave our word.”

“But what if Jim’s not here one day, and it’s just you, and she’s yours—”

Her eyes softened. “No.”

My chest hollowed. I had forgotten about the bags of secondhand goodies, the seizures on bikes, the time we spent with Willow each week. It was only about Rachelle now—and Ruby.

Later, I told Husband the fragile story. Sad, he frowned and shook his head, but he fell asleep that night. I didn’t.

Bear one another’s burdens.

The next day, I paced. Distracted and on autopilot, I cared for the girls. I wasn’t hungry, and I couldn’t focus. I was sick with a regret that wasn’t mine and grieving a loss I hadn’t suffered. I was desperate for Ruby.

Later, I went shopping and picked out a fragrant bar of soap and a cute dish towel and tucked them into a gift bag.

“I can’t stop thinking about you. And Ruby,” I said to Rachelle when she came over. I handed her the present.

“You didn’t have to do this,” she said, peeking into the bag.

I looked at the pittance in her hands. A small gift to soothe a gaping heart-wound. A ridiculous offering. “Rachelle, I’ve decided I don’t want you to pay me anymore. Just let me watch Willow for you.”

“How about a bartering system? You babysitting Willow for art?”

“I’d love that.”

If I were an artist, my medium would be paint and my style would be just like Rachelle’s: Egon Schiele meets early Picasso. I drooled over a few pieces of art in her house and acquired a couple of them over the next year in exchange for watching Willow. Finally, I commissioned a painting, telling Rachelle what I wanted.

“For me to do this,” she said, “you’ll have to tell me who he is to you.”

“He’s the Lifter of my head and the Lover of my soul,” I said.

Rachelle unveiled my painting in the spring of 2006 at an art gallery showcasing her work in northeast Minneapolis. I went with a friend to the opening night of the exhibition, and there on the wall was my idea on canvas, combined with Rachelle's artistic interpretation. My eyes brimmed. Next to the piece was a small card: “Not for Sale.”

Rachelle stood by me as I gazed at her work. I nodded. She took it off the wall to show me the title she had chosen and scrawled on the back: “Welcome.”

I took the painting home that night. It fit perfectly above the window over our buffet, and I stared at it.

Jesus, His eyes intense and His palms marked by excruciating love. One of His hands pushed away the darkness, and the other was opened to welcome all who would come.

*Come back next week for the conclusion of the story.

*Names in this blog have been changed to protect my family, neighbors, and friends in the neighborhood, and in a nod of appreciation to the beloved Swedish author Maj Lindman, I’ve renamed my three blondies Flicka, Ricka, and Dicka.

Welcome: Part 1

We are made for togetherness. We are made for all the beautiful things we know. We are made to tell the world there are no outsiders. Unknown

One of life’s most common actions, answering a ringing phone, might be forgettable. Or, within a moment, it might invite a person into someone else's story. In the spring of 2004, at the thirty-eight-week mark in my pregnancy with Dicka, I got a call. And in came the invitation.

“I’d like to hear more about the childcare you do,” a woman said.

I frowned. “Sorry, you must have the wrong number. I don’t do childcare.”

“Is this your phone number?” She rattled off my digits.

“Yes. How did you get it?”

She explained, and the memory of the flyer came back. Sometime in 2002, near the beginning of our life in north Minneapolis, I had a flickering urge to make some extra money. If I wanted to stay home, what better way than to do childcare for someone? On a whim, I had dropped off a flyer—with my phone number on tear-off tabs—at our little local library, asking the woman behind the desk if she would post it for me. I had never seen it hanging on the library’s bulletin board, so it was a miracle having the subject of the flyer surface now, two years later. Curiosity needled me. I had to meet Rachelle, the woman on the other end of the line.

Rachelle lived only six blocks from us, and later that week, she came over with her two girls, Ireland and Willow, and her husband Jim. Husband was home to meet them too, and we learned that while Jim was a stay-at-home dad, sometimes he needed a respite from caring for two-year-old Willow. Ireland was eight years old and in school, so she wouldn’t need the coverage.

While the men visited, I took Rachelle on a tour of our house. She was engaging, and her eyes brightened at the art on the girls’ bedroom walls. She was an artist too, I learned. She asked my childcare rates. I threw out a number, and she said she’d talk with Jim about it and let me know.

The visit ended, the warmth of connection singing through my soul. Another in-road into a neighborhood I was determined to welcome into our lives. As Rachelle, Jim, and the girls climbed into their car, we waved at them from the window.

“What a great family,” I said to Husband.

“When you were upstairs, Jim told me something.”

“Really? What?”

“He has cancer. That’s why he needs help with Willow sometimes.”

The news punched me, and any mundane thoughts about our day skittered from my mind. The childcare request grew larger than life—and death.

Rachelle phoned me the next day.

“Your rates are reasonable, and we’d love to have you watch Willow. After your baby comes, and you’re ready, of course.”

I swallowed hard. “Rachelle, I heard about Jim’s cancer. I’m sorry.”

“Well, now we’re happy we met you,” she said, her tone light. “It will help so much.”

“I’ll let you know when the baby’s here.”

But I knew the birth of more than one change was upon us.

This morning in 2022, I pause from my eighteen-year-old story to remember Rachelle and the intersection of our lives, the times to come that would bind our families, and lessons about the sacred welcome that awaits us all.

Come back next week for more.

*Names in this blog have been changed to protect my family and friends in the neighborhood, and in a nod of appreciation to the beloved Swedish author Maj Lindman, I’ve renamed my three blondies Flicka, Ricka, and Dicka.

The Hands

My bruised heart mourned the absence of Dad, but the machines connected to him in his hospital room, with their rhythmic whooshing and clicking, reminded me he wasn’t gone—at least not yet. The day was sometime in September 2006, in the hazy mass of twenty-four-hour periods, one flowing into the next, in the last week of his life.

My mom, sister, and I had camped around Dad’s bed for months already—not sleeping in the bone marrow transplant wing, although we did that at the very end. Tuesday, September 18, Dad’s official departure date, marked almost two months since the doctors shut down his voice by putting him under sedation, and I was left with his last words to me in July, “I’ll call you back later,” an unrealized souvenir to keep for the rest of time.

Before the machines and monitors ceased for good, though, I spent hours near a motionless and silent Dad, peace thrumming through my veins. The hallmarks of our days—the quiet of the room, Mom’s Bible splayed on a small table, jaunts down the hall for food or drink, the waiting—seemed to be on a forever loop. But one day—similar to the previous ones in every way except one—changed me.

I strode to a nearby single restroom. The sterile look of the small space reminded me again of sickness and The Severing. Exhausted, I washed my hands, assessing my reflection. I bent over the sink, cupped palms under the running water, and doused my face. Two hands, firm and warm, came to rest on my back. Probably Mom or my sister, although I hadn’t heard the door open. I inhaled a sob at the calming gesture, serenity swallowing my sadness, and lifted my gaze from the porcelain to the mirror above it.

No one stood behind me. And the door remained locked.

The weight of the touch slid away.

Over the past sixteen years, I’ve thought of the hands on me in the restroom that day. Last week, I heard someone tell of a time of distress when he had felt hands on his back too. It was likely angels, he said, and maybe the ones assigned to him from the very beginning.

Maybe so.

But I’ve always thought it was God Himself—powerful enough to pierce earthly time, loving enough to interrupt a wounded moment, humble enough to enter a hospital bathroom—Who had visited me that day in 2006.

And maybe that’s true too.

Time will tell.

Miracles: Part 4

Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see. C.S. Lewis

The old-fashioned floor grates were a necessity in the early part of the twentieth century when our old North Minneapolis house was heated by a woodstove in the basement. The stove went away, but the grates remained—one on the main level and one on the floor above—bringing lots of questions from adult guests and endless hours of play for children who, when left to their own devices, would remove the grate on the second level and stick their heads—or dangle a leg—through to the floor below. Those floor grates were built-in monitors in the early days; I could fold laundry in the basement and hear a crying baby two floors above me like she was in the next room.

With all the charm of an old house, however, there were things I didn’t want to know—like what lurked inside the walls. A winged creature stuck behind the plaster flapped until one day the walls fell silent. We later found the bird’s body—fully decomposed—when we opened the little trapdoor on the base of the chimney in our basement. But what I really didn’t want to know about was the electrical wiring hidden behind the walls, done by too many homeowners over more than ninety years.

We had so many power outages in the first couple of years in the house that I asked for a discount on our electric bill a few times and got it. Some of those blackouts affected the neighborhood, some just us. Husband seemed to be away on work travel when those happened, but I was prepared with candles, flashlights stowed around the house, and some foods I could whip up without power.

Husband was on an international trip the day the outlets in the kitchen started snapping. When they began reeking of burned plastic and the breaker blew, I got worried. I dialed Husband’s friend.

“You’ll be fine. That’s what breaker boxes are for,” he said, “to trip the circuits before your house burns down.”

I don’t recall the ending to The Tale of the Stinking Outlets, but the problem stopped with or without our intervention. Later, during some home renovation, Husband learned the mysteries of the breaker box.

“What went off now?” he hollered from the basement. “I just flipped a breaker.”

“The outlet in the bathroom and the light in the guest room,” I yelled back. “Oh, and the ceiling fan in the living room.”

In the early days, our furnace was as reliable as our breaker box was understandable, and I soon realized I could handle the darkness more than I could tolerate the cold. Our service plan through the gas company was solid, though, and a technician usually came to our house within hours. Especially in the dead of winter like that day in January years ago.

“We don’t have the part you need, but we just ordered it,” the repair guy said. “It’s Saturday, though, so it won’t be here until Monday. ‘Course, no deliveries on Sunday.”

“It’s fifty degrees in here,” I said.

“We’ll get you some loaner space heaters.”

The heaters didn’t raise the temperature, but if we stood a certain distance away, we could warm ourselves without burning our coats. Overnight, the temperature in the house dropped. In our many layers, we were sausages sharing a family bed that night.

Sunday seemed endless. We had to get through to Monday when the part would arrive. We lived in outdoor winter clothing. I even pulled on two stocking caps. We drove to a restaurant to thaw ourselves and returned home to snuggle in bed and watch movies.

Sunday evening, a neighbor picked up our girls for an event. I stood at the door and waved goodbye.

“Hey, you’ve got a package there,” he called to me before he climbed into his minivan.

A package from the gas company sat on the front steps: the furnace part slated for delivery by USPS on Monday. A miracle in a little cardboard box.

With gloved fingers, I dialed the familiar phone number. A technician came out, and our heat was restored within the hour.

Husband was away the day the garage across the alley ignited. The girls and I watched the inferno from our back door.

“Wow,” Flicka said in a whisper.

“Yeah,” I said. “Look at those firemen go.”

Another time, from the kitchen window I saw a small circle of flames licking up from the middle of the alley. I investigated. A single book was ablaze. I hustled back to the house and called our neighbor Glenda.

“I could probably put it out,” I said, “but do you think I should call 911?”

“Maybe,” she said. “It might be something explosive.”

Minutes later, a fire truck pulled into our alley. A firefighter jumped out of the cab and strode over to the burning book. He stomped out the flames with his big boot.

Thinking back, I now see our misadventures as miracles. And I see God. And like those parents in ancient times telling their children stories about the column of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night, about their dry passage through roaring waters, and about food falling from the sky when they were starving, I told my little girls about the electrical dangers that amounted to only a bad smell, about the impossible provision of a furnace part one Sunday night, and about the alley fires that didn’t touch us.

And I still tell the stories—even to my grown girls now—so on the days of fears and fires, we can all remember.

*Names in this blog have been changed to protect my family, neighbors, and friends in the neighborhood, and in a nod of appreciation to the beloved Swedish author Maj Lindman, I’ve renamed my three blondies Flicka, Ricka, and Dicka.

Miracles: Part 3

“The bank transaction pages you submitted won’t work,” Jill Brown, the woman from the mortgage company on the other end of the phone line, said. “We need the bank’s URL at the bottom of each page, or the underwriters won’t accept it.” 

My heart raced as sudden paperwork needs for the house purchase slammed us again. It was Friday, February 25, and if all went right, we could close on the place on Monday, February 28.

But all was not going right. 

The thorny path up to that moment pricked my mind again. We had signed a purchase agreement in October 2020 on a gutted home the seller was going to finish for us, but all these months later, several things remained undone—items the seller refused to do for us to meet the VA loan requirements. Our original mortgage financials from months earlier were squared away, back when we thought all would be completed in the house when we moved in. But now we needed a rehab loan to finish the work, and starting late January, we scrambled to provide the necessary documents, the process becoming much more complicated.  

The week had been all about paperwork, and every piece felt dire and impossible. We needed to show proof of a last-minute required chunk of money moving—having cleared one account and posted to another—even though we had initiated the transaction only hours earlier. And we immediately needed a copy of a future bank statement. Since we didn’t have it, I had scanned pages of our financial transactions and sent them off, hoping they’d work, and now we knew they didn’t. The finish line to home ownership neared, but would we stall out because of missing URLs?  

They say God’s never late and never early; He’s right on time. That sounds like good news, but I tried telling that to my stomach, twisting in the dark as I hoped to sleep each night. The ordeal surrounding our new home battered me again, along with all the emotions—anger, fear, anxiety—that had rattled my faith for almost a year and a half.  

Ms. Brown, still on the phone with me, waited. Husband sat in front of the desktop computer, searching for alternate ways to pull up our bank transaction pages showing a URL on each to prove we hadn’t generated the documents ourselves. I clicked around on my laptop too, praying an answer would materialize. But how? The solution to all our problems, the newest bank statement, was days away.  

Ms. Brown drew a breath and delivered a sentence that punched the rest of the air out of me. “And just so you know, we need legitimate proof of your bank transactions before closing today. Keep in mind it’s 3:40 p.m. for you there in Minnesota, but that puts it at 4:40 p.m. here in Michigan where the underwriters are. They close at 5:00.” 

I glanced at the clock as if to verify her words, and an eye twitched. My stomach flipped. Twenty minutes to produce the impossible. Of all the roadblocks, would this be the one to stop the process? The seller had already thrown down every obstacle over many months, wishing to thwart our purchase and sell our house to someone else for more money. And most recently, he demanded a closing of February 28—or else. Or else what? He would take us to court, he threatened, forcing us to sign a cancellation of our purchase agreement, and he would rent out our house, starting March 1. His threats, though illegal, empty, and irrational, still spun me into worry and sleeplessness. And now within the next twenty minutes, the underwriters needed what we couldn’t give them. 

“Can I call you right back?” I asked Ms. Brown. 

After ending our connection, I abandoned my laptop, dropped to the floor, and pressed my forehead against the cool wood.  

God, save us! We don’t have what we need, but You can do the impossible. Do it now! 

Husband pattered away on the keyboard. Distress blanketed me—and so did nausea. Another glimpse at the clock: 3:45. 

I pulled myself off the floor and grabbed my laptop again. We couldn’t get to the bank, request the legitimate proof, scan it, and send it to the underwriters inside of fifteen minutes. So, what could we do? 

I refreshed our online banking page. Wait. Could it be?

The newest bank statement, showing the money had posted to our account, popped up—days earlier than usual. Tears formed, blurring my screen. 

With a new call to Ms. Brown and a few keystrokes, we flew the document to Michigan with seven minutes to spare. 

Never late, never early. But right on time.  

Yes, He is. 

Thoughts on miracles

I'm taking a quick break from my blog series on miracles to say a short something about miracles.

They mark my life. Most often, I see them in places other people might not—like in the small, hidden spaces. But sometimes they’re big and in the open. Like yesterday.

On March 2, 2022, we wrapped up a more than sixteen-month struggle and closed on our new house. From the get-go, it was a wrestling match in the spiritual realm, the likes of which I’ve never known. But like Caleb in the book of Joshua, we took possession of the land. (No worries; we did it through a home loan and title company—not brute means.) We claimed this property for THE MORE that’s coming.

Today, I sit in the emptiness of the new place. This house isn’t about us—or only for us. Never was. Yes, our family will live here. Yes, it’ll look like a normal home. But just watch: through it will flow rivers of Living Water. And more miracles will come.

Stay tuned.

Miracles: Part 2

Dim lights cradled the group at the twenty-plus event, and song and prayer swathed all of us there that Sunday night. An hour had already floated away, but no one made a move to go.

Like pillars, we prayer team members stood along the wall of the great room, waiting for anyone to come. I looked across the sea of young people, and my heart squeezed like it does when I gaze over my own.

The band played, and lyrics wafted through the warmth of the space, a holy weight crushing us:

Before I spoke a word, You were singing over me

You have been so, so good to me

Before I took a breath, You breathed Your life in me

You have been so, so kind to me

A girl wove through the crowd and made her way over. Most of us who serve as intercessors aren’t counselors—we don’t pretend to be—but we can see fear coming, and I saw it too as it stopped in front of me, trembling the girl’s hands.

In a quavering voice, she said her name, Marnie, and that her friend Chance was missing. He wasn’t answering his phone. No one had heard from him. Law enforcement was searching too, but so far, no news. And it had been three weeks.

Dread pricked me, and my thoughts tumbled in terrible directions. I tamped down evidence of my worry, though; Marnie didn’t need more.

“May I place a hand on you to pray?” I asked. She nodded and stepped in.

I walked us into the sacred place where humility meets expectation, knowing if God’s will and mine intersected, my request would be granted. Marnie’s sobs shook her, so I asked for God’s peace to blanket her. Even as the words came out, she stilled. More words came to me too, and so did a sense about Chance. And I knew—absolutely knew—he was alive.

Oh, the overwhelming, never-ending reckless love of God

Oh, it chases me down, fights till I’m found, leaves the ninety-nine

I couldn’t earn it, I don’t deserve it, still You give Yourself away

Oh, the overwhelming, never-ending reckless love of God.


When I returned home that night, I shared the story of Marnie with my girls. It moved them, and we prayed together for Chance.

The next evening, Flicka and Ricka went to their life group, a group from church that met once a week. They returned hours later, breathless.

“Mom,” Ricka said. “You won’t believe this.”

I stopped my everything and listened.

“Remember Marnie, the girl you told us about last night?” Flicka said.

A breath caught. “Well, yeah.”

“She came to our life group tonight. She told everyone her friend Chance had been missing and that she got prayer from a lady last night. She said she was so sure he'd come back last night too, but he didn't. She was really disappointed,” Flicka said. “But he came back today.”

“Okay.” I pressed my hands to my face, nodding, my eyes filling. “Wow. Okay.”

“She said she wished she could tell the lady who prayed for her that he had come home,” Ricka said. “We told her that lady was our mom. I gave her your number.”

Hope surged. Praise shattered my heart. And my phone buzzed.

A text from an unknown number, I saw through the blur. And I already knew who it was.

Oh, it chases me down, fights till I’m found, leaves the ninety-nine

Oh, the overwhelming, never-ending reckless love of God.

(Note: As usual, I've changed the names in the story to protect the people in it.)

Miracles: Part 1

Life’s edge looms, and I have to step off it. It’s a divine invitation, see. And that makes it different from any other offer of excitement. My foot hovers over the chasm, but I know the ground will rise to meet it.

And this has been my life.

“You have more faith than anyone I know,” my friend says. Her statement surprises me. I do?

It’s all about the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen, and it often scares me. But it’s the only way I choose to live.

My stomach lurches as I think about the past I’ve walked through in wild faith—like when God called us to give away our house in 2011, and we did—and the future I already live believing it will come to pass, even though obstacles taunt us, saying it’s impossible. Still, I count on an ending I know is coming when I don’t know it’s coming.

Faith in faith is nothing. What good is that? But faith in God—in the reality of Him, the truth of Him, the goodness of Him—is everything.

Several years back, someone at church invited me to step into what I think is one of the least glamorous volunteer gigs in the place. Since I don’t need glitzy to spur me on, I said yes to the request to become a prayer team member, which is really the promise of doing big things in the unseen realm. I can do visibly unfulfilled, often unanswered, mostly unnoticed work, though; I’ve done it for decades in prayer. What I didn’t anticipate was the opposite: the revelation and resolution of things in the short-term and seen realm. They have a word for that concept, and it's miracles.

And that’s where my story starts.


One day a couple of years ago, I sat in a lawn chair in our back yard. August breezes hinted at the soon turn of the calendar’s page, but the sunshine told me summer still thrived. Ricka, age nineteen at the time, rested in a chair next to me, one leg propped. It was just the two of us, and she was silent. I finally glanced at her. Sunglasses hid her eyes, but her mouth wobbled.

I straightened in my seat. “Hey, what’s going on?”

Tears and concerns spilled out. Newly back from a nanny job in Germany, she grappled with her future; what was next? She wrestled with God; was He even good? And she struggled with friends; would she find one who fit her?

“I just want someone I can call anytime, day or night,” she said. “Someone who will do last-minute things—like cliff jumping or rock climbing. Or whatever.”

I rested a hand on her and not steering the requests in any certain way, I lifted them up, my heart hoping most for a close friend for my kid. When I was done with my petition, we basked in the sun longer, soaking in light.

“I think God wants me to be friends with Him first, though,” my girl said, “before anyone else.”

I exhaled my everything. “You won’t go wrong there.”

Six weeks later, after a Sunday morning church service, I took my place along one of the walls of the great room. A few other prayer team members spanned the length of the wall too, available to pray for anyone who asked. Ten minutes passed, and no one approached me. People filed out, chatting with friends as they exited. I waited.

As the next service was about to start, a young woman strode in my direction and stopped in front of me, her features etched in worry. I asked her name, and she told me about her situation too. She had just graduated from college and wondered what to do with her future. And then she voiced a desire.

“I guess I want a friend—someone more like me—going where I’m going. Maybe they like the outdoors, doing things spur-of-the-moment—I don’t know.” Her eyes filled. “I just don’t have anyone I can call whenever.”

Sometimes answers to prayers come faster than I think and in unlikely places, and in this case, right after the 9:30 service on an average Sunday in October. I covered the young woman’s requests, then offered her my idea.

“There’s someone you should meet,” I said. I pointed out Ricka’s location, just outside the meeting place’s front doors, welcoming people into the 11:00 service.

Relationship set-ups don’t always click, but this one between two young women heading in the same direction wasn’t a human connection after all. God had done it but was kind enough to let me in on the plan, to let me witness the moment right before the birth of what would become a deep, enduring friendship.

And my faith grew.

Not all prayer requests are for companionship and find their answer six weeks later, though. Some needs cry out from relationships snapped in two by a severing they never saw coming, from a filed missing person's report, from the torture of not knowing—for too long—the ending of the story.

Come back next week for Marnie's miracle. I'll tell you all about it.

*Names in this blog have been changed to protect my family and friends in the neighborhood, and in a nod of appreciation to the beloved Swedish author Maj Lindman, I’ve renamed my three blondies Flicka, Ricka, and Dicka.

Love does

I pulled this one out of the old files today for my new readers—and for me too. It soothes my heart to reread it and reminds me actions love louder than words.

Happy Valentine’s Day a few days early, dear readers!

*****

In 2006, I dropped out of life.

For some months, I retreated into our family’s story to care for my sixty-seven-year-old dad, a post-bone marrow transplant cancer patient. The church we attended at the time was big, but we were small—a family of five among a multitude of others. We didn’t know too many people, I reasoned, so we probably wouldn’t be missed. But through a friend outside the church, word of what our family was doing leaked to the congregation.

And the church ladies came.

One by one over many weeks, those ladies drove to our house and climbed our front steps to drop off tuna noodle casserole, fried chicken, tater tot hotdish, burritos, rice dishes, salads, cakes, brownies, garlic bread, and more. Twenty-six meals in all.

And each bite tasted like love.

Sometimes the ladies called first to let us know they were on their way. Sometimes they knocked on our door to signal their deliveries. Sometimes they deposited their edible gifts—without a word—into the designated cooler on our porch and tiptoed away.

No one left her name. No one paused for a thank you. And no one expected anything of us, strangers to them, caring for our immunosuppressed loved one.

Even though our three girls were tiny and Dad’s care was intense, we didn’t need the meals, I told myself. Those meals should be for those struggling more than we were. Feeling undeserving, I phoned the warm meal ministry coordinator to thank her.

“God must think you really need it,” she said. “The response has been overwhelming.”

No sound made it past the lump in my throat. Instead, I nodded into the receiver, absorbing all their love through the phone lines.


Because our culture says to, I think of romantic love each Valentine’s Day—but only for a few seconds. Then I remember those church ladies who delivered casseroles instead of counsel, salads instead of sermons, and homemade desserts instead of stories of their own pain.

Love. It’s everything, which goes without saying. But what I learned from those church ladies was love does without saying too.

*Names in this blog have been changed to protect my family, neighbors, and friends in the neighborhood, and in a nod of appreciation to the beloved Swedish author Maj Lindman, I’ve renamed my three blondies Flicka, Ricka, and Dicka.